incrediblemelk

@incrediblemelk@aus.social

Film/TV critic, copyeditor, author and shadow academic on Wurundjeri Woiwurrung country

Into #wattle, #robots, #folklore rituals, screen #costume, cultural #history, #etymology, digital senses and aesthetics, making up #StupidCatSongs

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incrediblemelk, to Etymology

TIL the word 'admiral' derives from Arabic 'emir' ('amir' – أَمِير) meaning 'commander'

but it's unlike other Arabic words that entered English, like alchemy and algebra, which use the Arabic definite article 'al' (which you might recognise from terrorist group al-Qaeda ("The base"), media organisation Al Jazeera ("The Peninsula") or the illegally destroyed Gazan hospital al-Shifa ("the healer")

because of this, folk etymologies try to say 'admiral' comes from a whole Arabic phrase, e.g. 'amir al-baḥr' – أَمِير اَلْبَحْر "commander of the sea", which was the title for the leaders of the Fatimid navy from the 10th to 12th centuries

but that's maybe just a coincidence. Apparently it's an added Latin suffix '-alis', because (without wading over my head into Latin linguistics) Latin has very few words that end in 'ir'. The word 'vir' ("man") is thought to be a contraction or syncope of the Old Latin 'viros'

The Fatimid navy mainly fought the Byzantine navy in Sicily and southern Italy, though – so this may be how the 'amir' part entered Latin

George of Antioch, a Byzantine Christian military officer who served the Norman king Roger II of Sicily, had previously worked for the Emir of Ifriqiya, Tamim ibn al-Muizz; his title of "commander-in-chief' was Latinised in the 13th century as "ammiratus ammiratorum"

The 12th-century Latin word 'amiralis' evolved into 'admiralis' in 13th-century Norman and Middle French, under the influence of the Latin prefix 'ad-', which benefited from the semantic chime with 'admirari' (to admire, to respect)

#etymology

incrediblemelk, to Etymology

Does your mind ever seize upon something ordinary and suddenly make it seem strange and beautiful?

I was just pondering the name 'Margaret', which has quite dowdy connotations these days. It's a name I associate with older and especially conservative women – fuck you Margaret Thatcher

a younger person with the name is more likely to go by a diminutive or derivation of it, such as Meg, Maggie, Molly, Peggy, Daisy, Maisie or Margot

Even the Latin name Margarita and the French name Marguerite seem more popular than the English derivative

The name means 'pearl' and came into the Romance languages from Greek 'margaritari' – μαργαριτάρι – which was a Persian loanword and ultimately came from the Sogdian language

Sogdian is a Middle Iranian language from the region whose capital is Samarqand – the famous Silk Road trading city that was also the hub of the Timurid Renaissance of Islamic scholarship. It was a Central Asian lingua franca of governance, trade and learning

Importantly, Sogdia is a landlocked region. So to me it seems they would have got the word for 'pearl' from someone else who traded pearls to them

But even despite all this #etymology, the actual English name Margaret looks cool and exotic to me now in an underrated way

like, the ending -aret with the single t really HITS for me

I wonder if these words that came into English with one t but into the Romance languages with two ts reflect the English custom of just lopping off a Latin suffix

I know I've seen other English words that do that, but of course none of them come to mind right now

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

What is a word that you had read, but after hearing it spoken aloud, you realized you were pronouncing completely wrong in your head?

Mine is pretty Embarrassing, and is just one of many!

MISLED! I'm not even sure how to type this out for it to make sense, but it was something like:

Myz-ulled

incrediblemelk,

@RickiTarr I once heard a radio newsreader say that “George W Bush had myzulled his allies” about WMDs and I was like “wait what” and then I realised!

At least you didn’t say it live on radio…

incrediblemelk, to latin

What kills me about learning #Latin is you’re effectively learning two languages at once. You’re learning the actual vocab, conjugations, declensions etc – and you’re also learning the language of #grammar itself: what the grammatical rules and parts are called and how they map to particular functions of language

Latin is the kind of language that, in the past, used to be drilled by asking discipuli things like “what is the passive second person plural subjunctive” or whatever the fuck

This means that a lot of the language learning tools I’ve encountered are based on the assumption that you already know this ‘second language’ of grammar, so eg the vocab flashcard lists I have found have got verbs in four different forms, and I’m like “what the fuck do those mean? Which is which and how do I know which one is called for in which situation?”

Like, I can tell that one of them is the infinitive and one of them looks like the first person present indicative – and by the way, these are terms that I only know because I’ve had to teach myself grammar in order to edit other people‘s work – what the fuck are the other two??? I’m just looking at them going, “well, you know, it’d be nice to know that”

If you are a native English speaker aged under 50, you probably didn’t learn grammar at school in your first language, and you probably don’t even know how to apply these words to your native language!

As a copyeditor in my own first language, English, I have had to teach myself the language of grammar in order to explain why certain choices I intuitively know are right or wrong. I am an EXCELLENT editor and yet I still have to look up English.stackexchange to find out what the word is for the function of language I am trying to explain

I’m honestly not sure if the traditional rote learning method or the intuitive ‘immersion’ method of language learning Duolingo uses is better for Latin

because Duolingo’s weakness is that it is based on guessing: you never learn the rules and so you don’t know why something is correct or not correct, which can help you analyse what a certain sentence demands

Basically Duolingo wants to make everyone into the same kind of speaker that I am in English

Surely there’s a happy medium

(Unfortunately I suspect it is ‘formal language classes such as one takes in school’)

clive, to random
@clive@saturation.social avatar

Andreessen's manifesto reminded me somewhat of Marinetti's 1909 "Manifesto of Futurism": https://www.italianfuturism.org/manifestos/foundingmanifesto/

"We intend to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and fearlessness ...

We affirm that the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed ...

We want to hymn the man at the wheel, who hurls the lance of his spirit across the Earth, along the circle of its orbit."

A bit more context to Marinetti's manifesto: https://artmejo.com/how-italian-futurism-influenced-the-rise-of-fascism/

incrediblemelk,

@clive you’re absolutely not the only one who’s picked up on this, esp as apparently part of it was straight ripped from Marinetti’s manifesto but with “poetry” swapped out for “technology”

incrediblemelk, to ai

A really nifty deep dive on the current state of , via getting the artists parodied to ‘cover’ his songs

It mainly shows how distinctive Weird Al’s voice is, though MechaLorde singing ‘Foil’ is pretty good

AI has the potential to disrupt the whole comedy genre of pop-cultural pastiche and parody. Why would you watch comedians doing impressions of celebrities, or riffing on pop-culture texts, when you could just manipulate the celebrity yourself using AI?

Still, what constantly annoys me about the state of AI-driven parody (eg the meme of pop-culture characters as models) is that the writing underpinning them is so poor

So even if we get to a point where we can completely puppeteer real people’s likenesses and voices, it still fails if there isn’t decent writing

Weird Al’s writing has always been excellent and hilarious. I mean, lines like in ‘Fat’, his parody of ‘Bad’: “When I sit around the house, I really sit around the house”

So far, that kind of stuff can’t be automatically generated – AI-created comedy is of the surreal and absurdist kind that reads as an unintentional, “machine-innocent” artefact of the generation process

https://waxy.org/2023/10/weird-ai-yankovic-voice-cloning/

incrediblemelk, to Etymology

When you think about it, 'workplace' is such an odd word. Apparently it dates from 1828

I always think of hybrid words as an Anglo-Saxon thing, but 'place' entered English from Old French around 1200

In turn, it came from medieval Latin 'placea' "place, spot", subbing in a c for the Latin 'platea' meaning an open space such as a courtyard, avenue or broad way

Compare with 'plaza', 'platz' and 'piazza'

In turn, Latin got 'platea' from Greek 'plateia (hodos)' – a broad (way). It's the feminine form of 'platys' meaning flat, which you'll know from the platypus, meaning "flat foot", and of course the patron saint of academics, Plato – who apparently got his wrestling nickname from the fact he was apparently very broad of physique

It's all from a hypothesised PIE root 'plat-', to spread

cf. flat, plate, plant, plane, plateau

Meanwhile in Old English, a French 'place' was a 'stow' or a 'stede'

Think how many English-derived place names end in stow, stowe and stead

But work is definitely an Old English word, previously spelled weorc or worc

That one goes back to the PIE 'werg-' meaning to do

It's the source of energy, orgy, and all the words that derive from organ (which means tool, implement: "that with which one works")

You might have seen surgery written archaically as 'chirurgy' which is from Ancient Greek 'kheirourgos', working by hand

The verb 'to work' was 'wyrcan', from which came 'wyrhta', a worker

This has come into English as 'wright'. Interestingly, in Anglo-Saxon a smith was understood as a metalworker while a wright was a woodworker

#Etymology

incrediblemelk,

Gravity vanishes as I continue to fall down the rabbit hole of etymology for "place"

I was just thinking about my #Duolingo languages, and thinking that in French, place meaning a particular location (rather than a sense of open space) is 'lieu', which has come through into English meaning substitute, 'in place of'

And in Italian it's 'posto'

Lieu came into modern French from Old French leu, from Latin locum (which has also come into English as a word meaning a temporary substitute doctor)

If you're a bit fancy with the old vocab you might use the Latin word locus, which also means a specific spot, but in English has the additional connotation of the perceived location of something diffuse and abstract ("the locus of power")

anyway that comes from the Old Latin stlocus, from the PIE 'stel-' meaning to put, place, locate

The Italian 'posto' is from the Latin 'postis', referring to an actual wooden post standing upright

and is ultimately from the PIE 'steh-' meaning to stand

cf. the Latin proofreading notation 'stet', which means that you've changed your mind about something you edited and the typesetter should "let it stand [as it was]"

but even that's a conjugation of the Latin verb 'stare', whose connotative meanings give English loads of rich synonyms that all go back to stand:

to stay/remain

As Virgil wrote in the Aenead,

"Troiaque, nunc stārēs"
("And Troy, you would be standing now")

to cost:

As Ovid wrote,

"stat mihi nōn parvō virtūs mea"

"My bravery costs me no small [price]"

Consider the idiom of "standing someone a drink" i.e. paying for it

Then there are all the other Latin derivatives that come from the sense of standing:

consisto, "to stand together'

As Julius Caesar wrote in his commentary on the Gallic wars:

"In foro ac locis patentioribus … constiterunt"

"in the marketplace and the more open places [THERE'S THAT WORD 'LOCUS' AGAIN] they stood together"

Notice as well that from this we get constituent, constituency – literally the people who stand together

to stand firm (constant, consistent, consistency)

to be agreed, to go together (the constituent ingredients)

insist, "to set foot on, to press upon, to pursue" and then the figurative sense of "to press on(wards))

Also can I PLEASE draw your attention to the bloody Roman emperor's sobriquet Constantine, meaning "steadfast"

Now what was I just talking about re: Old English for 'place' being 'stead'!!!!!

Okay I can sense myself melting down, I'ma post this (HEEHEHEHEHHE 'POST' THIS) now

#Etymology #ADHD

incrediblemelk,

@writeblankspace look, writing it basically gave me a stroke

incrediblemelk, to Futurology

I am so on board with Tyler Vigen’s extremely petty and niche
into the origins of a random pedestrian bridge

It is really inspirational to see how persistent his research is, and how resourceful his thinking is to find new avenues of inquiry when a trail of evidence ends

For me, the takeaway is to look for names of key stakeholders as keywords rather than relying on project names, project codes or place names

https://tylervigen.com/the-mystery-of-the-bloomfield-bridge

incrediblemelk, to random

I’m currently editing a PhD about Australian women’s lifestyle and news websites and I’ve gotta say the examples being analysed are making me feel so disgusted about the low intellectual standards that the media have for a presumptively female audience

and just the volume of dumb meaningless shit that these sites published!

There was a point in my career in the early 2010s when I could have become a professional feminist but thank god I stepped back from that precipice

I can’t remember how much I actually earnestly believed in the banal trash I used to write like “The Brocial Network proves just why we need Slutwalk” or “Norgs meet nationalism at the Miss Universe pageant”

But now it seems so pointless and disposable, and it’s more honest maybe to admit I was an opportunistic freelance grinder who would pitch hot takes for chump change

incrediblemelk, to random

I’m sick of having to cook food if I want to eat. Cooking is unbelievably fukt, it’s for chefs and chumps only

The despair of another mealtime coming up and knowing it will take me a minimum 30 minutes to transform ingredients into food

incrediblemelk, to FiberArts

After reading @pluralistic's latest piece on planned obsolescence as technofeudalism, I stumbled across this Tumblr post about how a rusty old 100-year-old Singer sewing machine can be restored to FEARSOME, SUPERIOR working order compared to any newish machine, by swapping in standard-sized parts that attach with standard flat-head screws

Meanwhile the modern machine's plastic parts wear out quickly and very little is attached with standard screws. It also depends on software that's now glitching

https://www.tumblr.com/viridianriver/721034993348067328/sewing-machines-planned-obsolescence-ive-got

#PlannedObsolescence #RightToRepair #sewing #SewingMachine #Antique #Vintage #AntiCapitalism

palafo, to random

Again and again, I have to say, Mastodon has better engagement than Twitter, BlueSky, Threads, Facebook, Post.news or Reddit

incrediblemelk,

@palafo you might define ‘engagement’ differently to me but I’ve noticed it’s much more normal to have polite and friendly conversations on Mastodon

I am new to Bluesky and have noticed it is the same as Twitter: if someone doesn’t know you they often ignore your reply

Here I feel more welcome to engage with posts by replying, and I will reply to people’s replies to me

incrediblemelk,

@trezzer @palafo I'm hoping it'll get better once it's out of invite-only mode

but I also appreciate that they're trying to get it right before it goes properly public

incrediblemelk, to Etymology

I was just thinking "can you have a figment of anything else but someone's imagination?" Turns out the word 'figment' is from the early C15th & could be used alone to mean an invented or imagined story – but it also carried negative connotations of deceit or false doctrine

It comes from the Latin 'figmentum', meaning something formed or fashioned, from the verb 'figurare', to form or shape (cf. "to make up a story"), and ultimately from a PIE root 'dheigh-' meaning to form or build

This is the same root that gives us dough, feign, feint, fiction, effigy, paradise (yep! it means "[lovely place with a wall] made around [it]") & lady, as the Old English hlǣfdīġe means "bread-kneader", a job that fell to the female head of a household

quick sidetrack: in the C14th 'feint' was an adjective for weak/feeble, from the Old French verb 'feindre', "to hesitate, falter; lack courage". It's fossilised as a stationery trade term for pale ruled lines, in case you've wondered why exercise-book covers spell it that way!

but most of all, 'dheigh-' gives us 'figure', "a visible or tangible shape or form of something". Such a rich word! My fave: the colloquial verb figure (out), "to expect or work out" comes from the maths sense of 'doing arithmetic', which in turn comes from numerals as shapes

#Etymology

incrediblemelk, to random

Just found this glasses cleaning #AlignmentChart I made in 2021

annaleen, to random
@annaleen@wandering.shop avatar

Today I actually told somebody that "I'm kind of big on Mastodon" and immediately felt like a total blockhead

incrediblemelk,

@annaleen being kinda big on Mastodon is so much more dignified than being kinda big on Threads or whatever

Tbh I don’t have a sense of what ‘popularity’ means on Mastodon which is the joy of it

It feels more egalitarian, like it’s okay to talk to everyone

Cf. other sites that make me feel like a lowly sprite being tolerated in the corner at the Unseelie Court

incrediblemelk, to bluesky

I find it so fascinating that back in November when I was part of the #TwitterMigration here, Mastodon was held up as the new birdsite, but it’s really only nerds who hold strongly to principles of equity, community and corporate independence who have stuck around here

Now everyone longs for #Bluesky because by design it’s exactly like #Twitter and they can continue to pursue the same kinds of self-promotion there with less platform friction

But I have come to enjoy Mastodon as a space where I don’t have to perform myself as a personal brand or promote my goddamn work, and can just quietly express my feelings and my tendentious thought trajectories, and have non-combative conversations

I like that the platform doesn’t push discovery on me. I like the slower pace and the scope for longer, more considered posts.

It reminds me of why I originally enjoyed blogging, and I like that

I signed up to the Bluesky waiting list but tbh it’s not urgent

maria, to random
@maria@thelife.boats avatar

Instead of asking an AI to help you write something, visit the #OpenLibrary and/or the #WaybackMachine at the @internetarchive and just look around for awhile

You'll get better inspiration from real books and magazines.

incrediblemelk,

@maria @internetarchive

I’ve often pondered that internet users have lost the skills of browsing and navigating (you know, those verbs that once described using the internet) and even the metaphor of the internet as a digital ‘space’ to be explored (to evoke the ghost of another old internet app)

Judging from how easily my students have tended to give up when they can’t immediately find what they’re “searching up”, I wonder if people’s skills of “having a look around” in an online archive – and being open to discovering random things – have atrophied

incrediblemelk, to random

Actually LOLIRLd at this exercise in #Duolingo #French

The French refusal of loanwords is particularly annoying when it comes to tech: “Internet” is about the only one they seem to have grudgingly accepted. I mean, why say digital camera when you could say “appareil photo numérique” and why say laptop when you could say “ordinateur portable”

jxf, to random
@jxf@mastodon.social avatar

As a hearing aid user myself since ~birth, this sort of situation would be a nightmare: https://www.sapiens.org/culture/planned-obsolescence-cochlear-implants/

Imagine if your glasses stopped working without getting software updates. It's insanity, with shades of @pluralistic's "Unauthorized Bread".

incrediblemelk,

@jxf @pluralistic yes, I’ve previously read about the terrible consequences for users of experimental bionic implants when venture capitalists get bored with the research project because it’s not being rolled out quickly or widely enough to be profitable to them. Then they pull the funding and the devices can’t be replaced when they stop working

From memory I have read separate stories about a bionic eye implant and a spinal implant. At least one recipient was an engineer who has taught themselves to repair and retrofit their own device, but what makes this so devastating is that in some cases, the surgery to install the device was so invasive that without it now they are worse off than if they’d never got it in the first place

It’s real dystopian cyberpunk stuff

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